VAN INSURANCE NEWS ROUNDUP: 7 DAYS ENDING 13 FEB 2015:
If you drive a car or a van owned by your company, you need to be careful that you don’t jeopardise the personal cover on your own private vehicle.
Apparently it’s a pretty big problem right now according to the Asset Protection Unit. THe anti-fraud unit that works with the car insurance and van insurance company in order to investigate claims has discovered that there are shedloads of drivers accepting blame when they’re actually in the wrong – with the result that corporate and fleet van insurance premiums are creeping upwards.
The biggest pitfall, according to the APU, is that company drivers think that they can simply accept fault for an accident falsely or prematurely without having to worry about their own personal no claims bonus. Unfortunately you’re more or less shooting yourself in the foot at this point; accepting liability on a corporate or fleet policy will almost certianly be reflected on your private insurance – and you’re going to be in for a nasty shock once you renew your personal cover, believe me!
Now, some of this is just ignorance. If you don’t know that taking responsibility for a crash in a corporate owned van or car is going to impact your private cover, you’re obviously going to be more likely to do so. However, the APU says that there’s been more than one incident they’ve investigated that it turns out the driver accepted liability in order to receive a ‘cash incentive’ in the anti-fraud unit’s words.
Now, I don’t know about you but when I hear the words ‘cash incentive’ I think ‘bribe’. Or possibly ‘insurance fraud.’ It wouldn’t surprise me to think that there are some particularly stupid criminal gangs out there engaging in crash for cash schemes with corporate or fleet vehicles, especially if they’re labouring under the false assumption that their private cover is safe from scrutiny. It’s situations like this that just make me laugh and rub my hands together in glee, knowing that the majority of these daft idiots will get caught and will almost inevitably have the book thrown at them – and that they’ll be ruining their own chances of getting cheap private cover for themselves all at the same time.